1 UK economy at bottom of EU growth league (Katie
Allen in The Guardian) The UK economy was the worst performer in the European
Union in the opening months of 2017 as the Brexit vote took its toll, according
to official statistics that underscore the challenge facing the next British
government.
With economic growth of just 0.2% in the first three
months of this year, the UK was well behind its European neighbours. Official
EU figures showed the growth for the whole of the EU was 0.6% in the first quarter.
The eurozone single currency bloc also grew 0.6% in the opening quarter, buoyed
by strong domestic demand.
The Eurostat figures showed every nation in the
28-member bloc reported first-quarter GDP figures growing faster than the UK.
The strongest expansion was in Romania at 1.7%, followed by Latvia at 1.6% and
Slovenia at 1.5%. The closest countries to the UK’s weak pace of growth were
France and Greece, with GDP growing 0.4% in both.
However, in year-on-year terms the UK was closer to
the EU performance and ahead of the 19-nation eurozone. After a strong second
half to 2016, when the economy defied predictions of a post-referendum slump,
UK GDP was still 2% bigger in the first quarter of 2017 than a year earlier.
The EU’s economy was 2.1% bigger on the year while the eurozone was up 1.9%.
2 Softbank buys Google robot-maker (BBC) Shares of
Japan's Softbank have surged to their highest in nearly two decades after the
firm bought robot-maker Boston Dynamics from Google's Alphabet. Boston
Dynamics, known for its robots such as Atlas and BigDog, has struggled to
commercialise its inventions and was put up for sale more than a year ago.
Softbank also announced it is buying robotics group
Schaft. The terms of the deals were not disclosed. Softbank shares rose by more
than 7% in Tokyo. Softbank began as a Japanese telecoms company but moved into
robotics and developed the human-like Pepper in 2014.
Founder Masayoshi Son has since built the Japanese
firm into a massive technology conglomerate through some big deals. They range
from buying UK chip firm ARM Holdings for $32bn) investing $1bn in satellite
startup OneWeb, to setting up a venture fund with Saudi Arabia. Mr Son is known
to have an eye for potentially transformative industries and trends. He was an
early investor in Alibaba.
3 Oil stabilizes but glut stays (Straits Times) Oil
prices stabilised on Friday following steep falls earlier this week, but they
were still pressured by evidence of an ongoing fuel glut despite efforts led by
OPEC to tighten the market by holding back production.
Brent crude was at $47.86 per barrel, unchanged from
its last close. It still puts Brent almost 12 per cent below its opening level
on May 25, when an Opec-led pledge to cut production was extended into 2018. US
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was at $45.63, also virtually unchanged
from the last close, but almost 11 per cent below May 25.
The slump was a result of oversupply despite the
effort led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) to
cut almost 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) of production until the first
quarter of 2018. US Energy Information Administration data showed a surprise
build in commercial crude oil stocks to 513.2 million barrels this week.
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